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Puppy allergies

Hello,

We have two cavaliers, an 10 month old ruby male named Bentley and our newest addition, a 4 month old tri girl named Sophie.

Sophie has been suffering from what we have determined are "hot spots" for the last couple of weeks. It started as one (on her face) and has since developed into several. They are areas of patchy loss of hair/ dry irritated skin that is not painful to touch but very itchy.
After several visits to the vet, at the beginning thinking our puppy had the mange... we have ruled out mites as well as fungal diseases and fleas. Thus leading us to the conclusion that it is very likely an allergy.
We are making the assumption (based on her age and the fact that it is winter) that it is a food allergy and as such are changing her food immediately. She was fed Fromm Puppy Gold - which is a high quality food but does contain several protein sources as well as some (high quality) grains and dairy. With some research, we have assumed chicken and/ or dairy are likely culprits, so we have put her on an "all-ages" grain-free food called PureVita which contains only one protein source - Salmon. In the mean time we are giving her some antihisamenes here and there and using a shampoo recommended by out vet. She is wearing a cone much of the time, sadly , to keep her from making these patches bleed by scratching them.
Now we have only switched foods for two days, so we are a long way from seeing the effects - but being that we are going by a lot of our own assumptions and research - we would love to hear from anyone who has gone through this with their puppy or dog.

In fact our older puppy Bentley, has an intolerance to chicken (and we believe dairy as well) - for him it wasn't an allergy but caused loose stools and increased tearing. If we've had two out of two with nutritional intolerance/ allergies, there must be others with them as well!